Hardware life cycles and Development Plans

[tj2419]

Hi

 

I am currently in the process of overhauling my IT development plan and realigning it with our school development plan and budgets.

 

Some hardware i am having a problem predicting life cycles for (as i have never had to replace them yet). The virtualisation kit is something i am looking to introduce over the next 18-24 months as a phased upgrade.

 

How often would you replace the following, (I know it depends on growth etc but a ball park figure based on experience would be really useful):

• Core Switch (Currently 3Com 4800G)
  
• Edge Switches - Currently HP v1910-48G
  
• SAN - 10TB (Currently use about 4TB for document shares and user work areas)
  
• Hosts for virtualised system
  

 

Also going to ask all staff to fill in a survey to ensure that there are no obvious areas i have overlooked and to see where they think development etc is needed. Could just get a lot of criticism but it at least gives a platform for it and shows i am attempting to tackle issues that are bought up by large numbers of staff.

 

Thanks

[Arthur]

How often would you replace the following

In my current school it would be...

 

• Core Switch - 10 years
  
• Edge Switches - 10 years
  
• SAN - 4-5 years
  
• Hosts for virtualised system - 4-5 years
  

[mrbios]

You don't really need to plan for the replacement of switches. Personally using entirely HP switches and they're all lifetime warranties, so if they fail I'm covered (though I keep the odd spare, for faster response to failures) Any plans for switching replacements should be on a case by case basis as you find you need more performance or switching capacity. Not something you can really plan for until the situation arises.

 

SAN - 5 to 7 years depending on how reliable the device has been and whether it's meeting performance requirements at the 5th year.

Servers - I'd say the same as above to be honest.

 

Be interesting to see if anyone agrees with me, but that's how i've always seen it.

[GrumbleDook]

Replacement programs should be based on both warranty and on projected improvements. I still chat to folk who had top of the range networks 10 years ago but are now struggling because there is no investment to improve the capacity or technology.